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This chapter follows Clarksdale's desegregation struggle from 1960 to the end of June 1963. It discusses Vera Pigee's demand for desegregation in Clarksdale Greyhound bus terminal, which symbolized the beginning of a more aggressive style of protest in Clarksdale. The chapter also describes the scale of student protests that emerged in the struggle for school desegregation. Caught in the sweeping wave of student-led protests, black youth also turned its attention to the desegregation of its town.

This chapter explores the mythology of "selling your soul at the crossroads" that has surrounded guitarist Robert Johnson and dominated contemporary conversations about the devil and the blues. Offering a new theory about Johnson's attitudinal debt to his mentor, Ike Zimmerman, it argues that Johnson, far from being haunted by evil, was a master ironist who viewed crossroads mythology skeptically and instrumentally: a way of attracting lovers and increasing his prestige. The film Crossroads (1986), an interracial buddy flick focused on the adventures of Johnson's peer Willie Brown and a young white blues student, Eugene Martone, reinvigorated the Johnson legend and stimulated Mississippi's nascent blues tourism business. The 1999 installation of a guitar-topped monument at "the crossroads" in Clarksdale, Mississippi certified the Johnson legend; this chapter investigates the deep history of that intersection and explores the meanings that tourists and guides have projected onto multiple crossroads locations in the Mississippi Delta.

This chapter argues that the meaning of the blues-devil has shifted over time, with white understandings that highlight Robert Johnson's soul-sale at the crossroads coming to dominate the contemporary conversation. Clarksdale, Mississippi has become a center of touristic interest in Johnson and a place where artists and investors seek to profit from a stereotyped, gothic-laden idea of the crossroads; this development bothers some black residents of the city, who feel as though their neighborhood, one historically connected with the blues, has been bypassed. The devil-blues lyric tradition, meanwhile, has flourished in the first fifteen years of the new millennium, a development driven both by Johnson's popularity and by a post-9/11 anxiety about "evil" at large in the world. The longstanding struggle between black southern ministers and purveyors of "the devil's music" continues into the present, at least in Mississippi, but with noticeably less intensity than in days gone by.

This chapter recounts the varying reports between white-owned and black-owned newspapers about a shooting spree allegedly committed by a black man. The white-owned newspaper, Clarksdale Press Register, described Jonas Causey, the suspect, as a “crazed 70-year-old Negro,” while noting that he shot the two white men for no reason. The paper also claimed that Jonas shot his wife in the leg. Similar accounts appeared in another white-owned newspaper, painting an image of a mentally unstable man who had gone on a shooting rampage. In contrast, the black-owned newspaper, Jackson Advocate, reported that the victims provoked Jonas to commit the crime, and that one of the white policemen had shot the wife while arresting Jonas. This narrative clash represents the battle between blacks and whites over the meanings of race and violence, and over the labeling of aggressors, criminals, protectors, victims, and heroes.

This chapter examines how people organized themselves in Mississippi by focusing on the Delta city of Clarksdale from the 1950s through the 1990s. More specifically, it considers how activists in different groups made pragmatic use of the differences among those groups and how the unique challenges they faced brought about a great deal of creativity. It highlights specific moments when local activism by African Americans worked best, or at least when the impact proved more enduring. It also looks at the daily occurrence of negotiations and collisions in pursuit of larger shared goals of black freedom, citizenship, and justice. The chapter cites examples of what it calls “flexible alliances” among local people and leaders and their relationship to the NAACP. Finally, it assesses the role of two leading figures in the Mississippi civil rights movement: Amzie Moore and Aaron Henry.

This book chronicles the black freedom struggle in Clarksdale, Mississippi, from 1951 to the mid-1970s. It illustrates how a community organizing during the mass civil rights movement found, chose, or appropriated opportunities to survive. The book presents narratives that demonstrate the triumphs and tragedies of Clarksdale's residents as they arrived at various crossroads.

This chapter focuses on two local leaders who are emblematic of postwar grassroots black freedom movements: Aaron Henry and Vera Pigee. Virtually unknown on the national stage, both organized and sustained the local movement in Clarksdale and spent the greater part of their adult lives devoted to the struggle for racial justice in Mississippi.

This chapter examines how Mississippi's black citizens literally and dramatically entered the national struggle over civil rights. In particular, Clarksdale's activists worked to desegregate Clarksdale itself and they joined statewide campaigns for voting rights, also known as the 1964 Freedom Summer, a massive organizing effort that carried Mississippi into the national conversation in the summer of 1964 in new ways.

This epilogue presents two snapshots of Clarksdale in the 1990s, two narratives coming from different directions but meeting at the Crossroads, offering insight into how much the city has changed yet remains deeply mired in problems precipitated by race and power dynamics. Arguing that the story of Clarksdale has not ended, it tackles two questions: What happened to Clarksdale's mass movement? And what are some of the manifestations of the rightward shift?

This chapter relates the author’s experience in being arrested in Clarksdale, Mississippi for an unclear traffic offense while conducting a research on blues and hip-hop music in the Mississippi Delta. It discusses the author’s observation about the condition in the Delta. It also mentions that the author co-directed a documentary film with TopNotch the Villain, and the rapper will also get half of the profits from the sale of this book.

This chapter examines the origins of Caroline Barr before she became part of the Faulkner household. It explains that there are different versions of Barr's origins and suggests that she may have been from the Guinea coast of Africa because she can speak a Gullah dialect. It also discusses the work of Barr and her daughters on a cotton plantation near Clarksdale. This chapter also suggests that Barr's feistiness and temper may indicate some of the reasons why William Faulkner was so drawn to her and why the irresolvably painful issues their relationship raised remained such a dominating presence in his imagination.